Simple Sonata duct mod [update-need a bigger PSU duct]

nannygoat · Post by **nannygoat** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 3:38 am

Took me a while to complete everything, but with all the materials to hand I could probably reproduce the whole effort in an hour or two.

The duct material is standard 100mm from B&Q

The plastic fittings are so soft I managed to cut them with scissors. I thought about using aluminium ducting, but I realised that in a system like this, all the heat should be lost from the system via the outgoing air flow, and aluminium would only have allowed heat back into the case via the thin walls of the ducting.
The most poorly built heatsink baffle in the world:

First of all I tried using a 120mm fan mounted in its normal position at the back of the sonata to pull air off the CPU, but this was still too noisy, so I mounted an 80mm panaflo on top of the baffle:

The sonata PSU has annoyed me since I bought the case. It doesn't get hot at all, yet the fan is always humming away noticeably. I opened up the PSU and removed the fan, and took the temp. controlled fan output out of the back of the PSU, and attached it to the 120mm vantec stealth in front of the hard drives.
Since I installed the pre-cut acoustipack, cool air from the front now flows over the hard drives, up the rectangular ducting and over the PSU, which means - no fans at the back:

With the panaflo turned down to ~5V the only noise coming from the case is due to turbulence, which is why I'm thinking of installing some smooth sound absorbing material on the inside of the ducting, to reduce the turbulence and absorb any HF-noise coming from the panaflo.
Temperatures are (CPU, case) ~45C, 27C idle , ~51C, 31C after 30 mins CPUburn-in. Hard disks are always around 30C.
I could probably get CPU temp. down by about 5C by using a decent heatsink (currently a Tt Volcano 9).
It'll have to do until I can get my hands on a Zalman reserator.....

MonsterMac · Post by **MonsterMac** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 11:36 am

Nice mod! I modded my Antec TP380W as well except I put a Panaflo L1A in instead of taking the fan out. In my experience Antec PSU's have always run very hot so are you sure your not going to fry your PSU by not having a fan there (my Antec PSU ran pretty darn hot)? Looks great though, very creative! You might notice a decrease in temps if you removed the grills from the 120mm fan and the PSU grill, and if you havent already you should do the front bezel mods in the cases section. Good job!

nannygoat · Post by **nannygoat** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 12:55 pm

Thanks mac - I was slightly worried about the PSU, but after monitoring the temp today I think it's OK. I stuck a thermistor through the cable grommet into the PSU round about where the large capacitors and one of the heatsinks are; probably the hottest part of the PSU since there's not much air flow there. I get readings of about 45C at minimal fan speeds (~3-4V).
I checked out the CFM for the antec fan (on SPCR) apparently 39 CFM, compared to the fan I'm using which is 53cfm at maximum. So for equivalent voltages, even allowing for turbulence in the ducting, I think I'm still getting enough air through the PSU.
Time is the ultimate test though, I just hope it doesn't take my MB with it if it melts...

MonsterMac · Post by **MonsterMac** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 5:04 pm

ive heard that when antec die; they dont bring any of your equipment down with it, so i think you'll be safe

quksilver · Post by **quksilver** » Sun May 16, 2004 4:05 pm

Hi, does anyone know where to get that 100mm ducting in the US? I checked McMaster.com and found lots of references to a variety of PVC ducting and tubing, but couldn't tell from the descriptions what it would look like. I also tried Home Depot and Lowes, but they've never even heard of it.

loren_brothers · Post by **loren_brothers** » Sun May 16, 2004 4:20 pm

if you are referring to the round stuff it is standard 4" dryer duct....if you want the rectangular stuff: Never seen it in 9 years of being a buyer for a Hardware store.

Good luck

nannygoat · Post by **nannygoat** » Mon May 17, 2004 2:49 pm

I thought I'd let you know the previous setup didn't perform all that well, and I wouldn't worry about the rectangular ducting anyway, I just got it because it was compact and i only needed to bend it in one dimension. Unfortunately it's only 50 x 100mm so didn't transfer enough air up to the PSU, and created so much turbulence noise I had to cut extra holes through the mounting. I then removed the ducting altogether and this is what my Sonata looks like now:

I got rid of the Vantec 'stealth', which sucked alot more than a fan should, and added a panaflo L1A to the rear of the PSU:

This is much more efficient (i think the previous setup was actually running way too hot because of all the turbulence on the way up the duct) and obviously much quieter, especially since I mounted the fan using sorbothane, like so:

The sorbothane wasn't sticky enough on its own so i used double-sided tape and checked a day later to see if it had come off.
The case is well sealed enough so that the majority of the incoming air passes over the HDD and then up to the PSU fan.
The 120mm fan is still extracting air through the heatsink shroud (which you can see above) and expelling it to the outside. I reversed the flow direction yesterday to see what happened - and was completely unsurprised to see that my CPU temp went down by 10C, and my HDD went up by 10C. Since the CPU and PSU fans are pushing approximately the same volume of air per second, the front half of the case was effectively 'out of the loop', excuse my 24-speak.
Losing a CPU might be bad, but I don't fancy losing all my data - not after the nightmare with my 40gigs of mp3s....
Anyway, with all fans set at their start-up voltages, i.e. lowest possible settigs [stock sonata 120mm, panaflo 80mm L1A] temps are:

Barton 2500+ (no OC) - ~ 45C idle, 55C load
Mobo - ~ 30C
Seagate barracuda 7200.7 200GB - ~ 35C

Ambient temp ~ 20C